"Well, Mr. Orkins, sir, ye see it is as this: you've lost a little dorg. Well, you'll say, 'How do you know that 'ere, Sam?' 'Well, sir,' I says, ''ow don't I know it? Ain't you bin an' offered fourteen pun for that there leetle dorg? Why, it's knowed dreckly all round Mile End—the werry 'ome of lorst dorgs—and that there dorg, find him when you wool, why, he ain't worth more'n fourteen bob, sir.' Now, 'ow d'ye 'count for that, sir?"
"You've seen him, then?"
"Not I," says Sam, unmoved even by a twitch; "but I knows a party as 'as, and it ain't likely, Mr. Orkins, as you'll get 'im by orferin' a price like that, for why? Why, it stands to reason—don't it, Mr. Orkins?—it ain't the dorg you're payin' for, but your feelins as these 'ere wagabonds is tradin' on, Mr. Orkins; that's where it is. O sir, it's abominable, as I tells 'em, keepin' a gennelman's dorg."
I was perfectly thunderstruck with the man's philosophy and good feeling.
"Go on, Mr. Linton."
"Well, Mr. Orkins, they knows—damn 'em!—as your feelins ull make you orfer more and more, for who knows that there dorg might belong to a lidy, and then her feelins has to be took into consideration. I'll tell 'ee now, Mr. Orkins, how this class of wagabond works, for wagabonds I must allow they be. Well, they meets, let's say, at a public, and one says to another, 'I say, Bill,' he says, 'that there dawg as you found 'longs to Lawyer Orkins; he's bloomin' fond o' dawgs, is Lawyer Orkins, so they say, and he can pay for it.' 'Right you are,' says Bill, 'and a d—— lawyer shall pay for it. He makes us pay when we wants him, and now we got him we'll make him pay.' So you see, Mr. Orkins, where it is, and whereas the way to do it is to say to these fellers—I'll just suppose, sir, I'm you and you're me, sir; no offence, I hope—'Well, I wants the dawg back.' Well, they says; leastways, I ses, ses I,—
"'Lawyer Orkins, you lost a dawg, 'ave yer?'
"'Yes,' ses you, 'I have,' like a gennelman—excuse my imitation, sir—' and I don't keer a damn for the whelp!' That's wot you orter say. 'He's only a bloomin' mongrel.'"
"Very good; what am I to say next, Mr. Linton?"
"'Don't yer?' says the tother feller; 'then what the h—— are yer looken arter him for?'